Toxicity (Out of the Box Book 13)

by Robert J. Crane

  “And yet I’m not here very often,” I said. “Work, Scott. You remember? That thing you used to do with me? The ragged feeling it gives you when you travel six days out of seven trying to investigate everything under the sun? It’s not like I’m skipping out on you to hang out in Aspen or something. I’m not hitting the slopes with the stars while you freeze in MSP, okay?”

  “Well, I know that,” he said, again speaking in the obvious tone. “I’m just saying that … we never see each other.”

  “Never’s a strong word.”

  “You’ve been gone for two weeks. Before that, a week, so I saw you for one night and you were out again.”

  “See? Far cry from never.”

  “Sienna … we can’t live like this,” Scott said, blinking a little. “There’s no future in this.”

  “Oh, that’s cute,” Harmon said, freezing the memory. “He thinks he has a future with you.”

  “He always was the optimist in the relationship,” I said, and then my other self resumed speaking to Scott: “I can’t even see past the end of tomorrow anymore. Talking about the future is just ridiculous.”

  “You should quit this stupid job,” Scott said. “You don’t need it. The government is going to continue to jerk you around for as long as they can. And what is it going to get you? You’re not making nearly as much as we were when we were with the Directorate—”

  “But I have the added bonus of my boss not trying to kill my boyfriend, so there’s that.”

  “Man, I blew the call on that one,” I said, stopping before Scott could make his reply. I glanced at Harmon. “Although, I guess, technically, you weren’t trying to kill him so much as bend him to your will.”

  “Not until later. And I wasn’t technically your boss, either,” Harmon said. “Boss’s boss’s boss? Something like that? I forget how many layers there were between us.”

  “This is not a good career, Sienna,” Scott said. “There’s no future in this.”

  I looked at him in weary annoyance. “In my career … or with you if I keep my career? Because I think maybe you’re mixing the two together.”

  “Both, I would say,” Scott threw his hands wide. “I know you’re going to see this as a threat, but it’s not. Keep your job if that’s what you want, but … how are you going to have time for a family, or a future life if—”

  “Maybe I don’t want those things,” the other me said sullenly.

  “For now. What about—”

  “What about never?” I asked. “I’m a succubus, Scott. The contortions we have to do in order to be intimate? I get that you’re willing to undergo the kink now, but I bet you get tired of it in a few years, that whole no flesh-to-flesh contact thing. And the idea about having a family? Yeah, I don’t think I’m on board with that.”

  “Because you’re worried about becoming your mom?” he asked.

  He said it gently but I snapped anyway. “Because I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, and being exhausted to the point of partial brain death before I even go into parenthood doesn’t fill me with confidence that I’m going to be a great parent, no. I’m not ready. I’m twenty years old, okay? I can’t even legally become an alcoholic yet. I’m sorry if I’m blurry on what my future entails. This is my time to work, to do the thing—the task—that’s set in front of me. You didn’t want to do what I did, and that’s fine—” It really, really wasn’t, it felt personally insulting, and I definitely conveyed that with my word choice and tone, “—but trying to push me in the direction of your dreams is not going to go well, because I’m not ready.”

  “When will you be ready?” Scott asked.

  “Maybe never,” I said. “Scott, we’re at loggerheads. This is what I was trying to tell you before—we want different things.”

  “I want you,” Scott said.

  “No, you want me plus a future, and me is not sure me even wants the future you envision.” I shook my tongue after committing that grammatical destruction. Mom would have flicked my ear for it.

  “Is it so outrageous that I want you and everything the future with you could hold?” he asked, sounding like a puppy I’d beaten a few good times.

  “Not outrageous, just not … probable right now,” I finished, a little lamely. “You want X, I want Y. Doesn’t make us bad people, it just means we want different things. Maybe things that aren’t compatible.”

  He lowered his head, staring at the floor as though it provided answers. “You can’t want to do this—this job—forever.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe not. But … maybe so.”

  “But—”

  “There’s no buts,” I said. “And no help, you saw to that.” The whole sentence bled my resentment at him. Things had gotten so much more difficult since he and the others had left me and Reed to do all the work ourselves.

  “Not fair.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “Because you swore you wanted to do this job a few years ago. But that changed. And I get that it changed. But now you’re trying your hardest to squeeze me into changing in the direction you went. Well … I don’t want to work for your dad. I don’t want leave this job. Not now, and maybe never. I get that it doesn’t fit your vision of the future, but you just have to accept that if you’re with me, I’m a person who has her own agenda. And if ours aren’t compatible, then … maybe we just have to admit that and move on.”

  “You held it together pretty well there,” Harmon said, scrutinizing my face as though critically assessing a piece of art.

  “I certainly didn’t feel like holding it together at that point,” I said, looking at my own face. It was a mask of sheer fatigue and drawn emotion. I remembered how I felt in that moment, though, and it was one where I channeled my excess emotion into my next mission, resulting in a murderer getting punched so hard in the face that he spent a week in the hospital even with his meta-healing before I put him in the Cube.

  “How did you feel?” Harmon asked, with something akin to sympathy.

  “You’re no Zollers,” I said sadly, shaking my head.

  “Well, I’m all you’ve got, sweetheart.”

  I sighed. “You know how I felt—”

  “I don’t, remember? No telepathy right now. I can’t look back in your memories and see.”

  “Okay, well, I felt terrible. Got it?”

  “Saying you felt terrible is like saying grape juice is kind of sweet. Technically accurate, but a poor description that leaves out the texture—”

  “Grape juice has a texture?”

  “Silky. A little tart. Full-bodied—”

  “I think you’ve been drinking fermented grape juice.”

  “Shh. It hits the tongue with a bracing edge of flavor, and when you sniff it—”

  “You have given this way too much thought.”

  “—it’s inviting. It wants to be sipped, slowly—”

  “What do they make whiskey out of? Because this sounds more like whiskey.”

  “Wheat. And you’re missing the point. Whatever your poison—”

  “I doubt grape juice is a poison, unless you’re a demon and it really is the blood of—”

  “—you’re describing it without feeling, without life. How did you feel about Scott in that moment?”

  “Or you’re diabetic. Pretty sure grape juice has high sugar content.” Harmon was just looking at me now, one eyebrow raised. “How did I feel? Very little. Dead inside. Tired all the time. Uhhh …”

  “Keep going. It’s never the first thing you think of that really captures it.”

  “You sure? Because when I met you, I thought, ‘asshole,’ and I think, even after all this time, that totally nails it.” He waited expectantly. “Fine. How did I feel? Like I lacked control over my life in that moment. Like Scott and I were two trains on two separate tracks that were diverging—except we kind of crashed first—”

  Harmon looked at me blankly. “I was clearly asking too much of you on this description thing.”
r />   “Look, I’m doing my best.”

  “No, no, you wouldn’t ask a snail to fly or a lion to eat a salad. It’s fine. You’re beyond your capability when it comes to metaphor.”

  I made a low growling sound at him. “Metaphor? You want a metaphor? You make me feel like I’ve shoved my head into a vise.”

  “That’s a simile.”

  I barely held in a louder growl, trying to keep myself from becoming a really angry lioness and ripping his imaginary face off. “How did I feel? I felt as though I were going to explode from the heart out. Like I was spinning out of control on an icy road, and the dark night was closing in around me, trees whipping in circles as I spun closer to my death. You happy now? Get it?”

  He gave a small nod of concession. “Better.”

  I looked at the little scene, me and Scott, Scott and I … “I don’t know what I could have done differently at that point.”

  “Quit your job?”

  “Wasn’t ready yet,” I said.

  “Make a clean break?”

  “Probably,” I said. “That would have … probably been a good idea.” I sent the memory forward, skipping the next part, where we argued and talked, argued and talked, until the sun was coming up and I was so bleary-eyed I had to lay down. Scott curled up next to me, our anger spent but no passion rekindled—because I didn’t have anything left.

  “I don’t want to fight anymore,” the other me said, wearily.

  “Neither do I,” Scott said. “I didn’t want to fight at all, but … we seem to do it—”

  “Every time we get together,” I answered for him. In response, he put a hand over my belly and pulled me closer, spooning me tightly as we fell into silence.

  “So adorable,” Harmon said, looking at the two of us wearily cuddling. “hard to believe you two kids didn’t make it.”

  “Cuteness is hardly the best metric for determining the success of a couple.”

  “Yes, well,” he said, “I suppose if you don’t hurry up and die soon, I’ll get to ride this little tour all the way to the end and see for myself.”

  Something about that made my shoulders just slump. “I suppose you will,” I said, not really very excited about seeing that one again for myself.

  45.

  June

  The howl of the siren behind her felt like the last damned straw June could handle today. “Blow him off the road, Ell,” she said, holding her hands over her ears. “Get him like the other one and let’s get out of here before any more come after us.”

  Ell was silent for a moment, and then an ungodly roar of wind swept in behind them, loud enough that June could hear it through her cupped hands. The police cruiser and another car both spun out as Ell stepped on the gas, speeding them down the highway. He looked pale and stricken, but kept his hands on the wheel as the sirens faded behind them.

  June didn’t dare look back. She didn’t want to see what had become of the cop car. She was afraid she might get sick in her seat again.

  “This is getting so out of control,” Ell said. “It’s just—we’re swerving all over now, like that cop. And they’re gonna keep coming after us.”

  “Yeah,” June said, frozen in her seat. “I know.” The faint sound of the siren was dimming at last.

  No, wait … it was getting closer? Louder?

  “Oh, no …” Ell said.

  There they were, two more cop cars, shooting down the opposite side of the interstate toward them. They zipped past and slowed, other drivers avoiding them, as they came to a dirt U-turn and hung it, coming out onto the highway behind June and Ell.

  “They’re never going to stop coming,” Ell said softly.

  “We’ll make ’em,” June said with weary assurance. “We have to make ’em. They can’t—there’s not an infinite supply of them, and up til now we’ve run them off just fine. They’ve never come after us until now—”

  Ell just looked over at her like he was dead, and croaked: “We never killed Sienna Nealon before.”

  “Or anyone,” she finished for him, all instinct to strike back drained with that thought. Maybe this really was it.

  The end of the road.

  “Just drive,” she said, hanging her head, and Ell stomped the gas.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked, glancing forward and backward, trying to keep as much an eye on the cars ahead as he did the cops catching up on them. “They’ll set up a roadblock, June.”

  “They’ll back up traffic for miles if they do it on the interstate,” she said. “But … we’ll get off anyway. Double back, maybe.” She nodded at a green exit sign ahead. “There. You can get off there, and we’ll figure out where to go next.”

  “But what about the two behind us?” He almost whined. “I don’t think I’ve got much of anything left to blow them away with.” He looked at her plaintively. “I’m tired, June.”

  She looked at him. It was probably true; he was sweating and pale, looked like he’d been for a ten-mile run after spending a month on the couch.

  Ugh. He was so damned weak sometimes. “Just keep driving,” she said.

  “But they’re catching us.”

  “Let ’em try,” June said, keeping an eye on the rearview.

  Sure enough, the two cop cars were closing. They were the new ones, the SUVs, the Fords. They were three cars back, and then people peeled away, changing lanes to give the police a clear avenue. Probably relieved they weren’t the ones the officers were after.

  Pretty soon they were a car length away from the back bumper, and June was ready, window down.

  “When I tell you to, change lanes and go for that exit, you hear me?” June kept her eyes focused on the rearview, and her hand hung lightly out the window. “And hold your breath.”

  Ell nodded once. He’d been with her long enough to know what she intended.

  The cloud of purple blew out so dense and tight it might have been shot out of the tailpipe of a backfiring car. It hung low over the road as she’d meant it to, puffing and settling just behind them, completely encompassing the two cop cars.

  “Now,” she said, and Ell swerved, leaving the purple cloud behind as he weaved through the right lane and onto the exit ramp. June watched the cop cars go by, covered in the purple toxin. She honed in on them, centered it, wouldn’t let it move one direction or another save for that it stayed on them, with them at its middle, as she and Ell drifted down the exit ramp and took a turn.

  Once they were out of sight, she let the cloud go, unable to keep it together anymore. “You think they got a breath of it?” Ell asked nervously.

  “Probably not,” she said as he sped them up a road, fumbling with his phone to reset the navigation. “They knew what they were going into chasing us. I bet they set their cars to recirculate air.” She didn’t add the, “I hope,” that she felt surprised to be thinking. It was weird, wasn’t it? To want them to be okay, to be alive when she’d just killed someone this very morning?

  She almost started retching again thinking about it.

  “Where do we go?” Ell asked, still fumbling with his phone, one hand on the wheel, ninety miles an hour down a back road.

  June settled back, strangely comfortable with the danger she saw in his actions. If he flipped the car, if they crashed and died … it’d all be over in its own way, wouldn’t it? There was some relief in the thought, the fear and the running all done. She felt tired, too, she realized, but a different kind of exhaustion than came from lack of sleep, or from using her powers too much. “I want to go to the beach again, Ell. Take me to the beach.” She rested against the seat, feeling that sense of bone-weariness settle over her. “Please.”

  Ell sat there with phone in hand for a minute, contemplating, and then he nodded, once. “Okay. The beach.” And fiddled with his phone until it said, “Starting route …”

  June closed her eyes, not caring what it took to get there. She only wanted to be out of this, away from all this … back to a time when it was simpler, and wh
en the road ahead seemed to stretch to the horizon … without a cop or a concern anywhere on it.

  46.

  Scott

  His phone had stopped ringing after a while. It had been Phillips, whom he’d shunted to the voicemail every time and whose messages he hadn’t bothered to check. They were probably full of overheated rhetoric anyway, empty bluster, threats.

  The smell of motel room was getting worse. Sienna’s skin had a grey, plasticine pallor to it. Her pulse was now down to thirty beats a minute by Scott’s count, though the sheet between his fingertips and her wrist might have been muddling his count somewhat.

  The phone lit up again, and he looked at it by habit, hoping for one name—not Phillip’s—and getting another instead.

  He answered. “Reed?”

  “Hey Scotty,” Reed said on the other end, sounding a lot more lively than the tortured, angry man he’d been when last they’d crossed paths. “I heard you’re derelicting your duty.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Scott said, reaching down to take Sienna’s pulse again.

  “Isn’t it always,” Reed said breezily. “I got a call from your boss about this Florida situation, that couple running amok all over the place. He wanted to hire my team to run them down. Sounded desperate. I asked if you were looking into it and he got all clammy all the sudden. I think he’s about ready to do something stupid.”

  “He does that,” Scott said.

  “No shit,” Reed said. “I worked for him, too, remember? Longer than you. He’s your best buddy when you’re doing everything he wants you to, but the minute you have a mind of your own, the knives come out. Perfect guy to work in bureaucracy, but it makes my heart stop beating when I think about him being in charge of the metahuman response task force. Or whatever they call it these days.” He paused. “So … what is the deal, man? You’re in Florida, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why are you avoiding this particular crisis? Because I told him flat out, we’re too booked to even consider helping. My teams are all over the place—Augustus and Taneshia—we just temp hired her, they’re up in Pennsylvania, we hired Jamal, his brother—don’t know if you know him—and he and Angel are in New England. I got Veronika and Colin doing business out in Cali, and then I’m in Seattle myself—”